The risks and rewards of pausing

One of the most frequent self-criticisms people make of themselves as public speakers is that they rush through their prepared message to the detriment of both clarity and comfort. While I believe people can be excessively harsh on themselves when assessing their performance, this is a fair insight.

In most cases, my advice to speakers is to slow the delivery down by inserting some pauses between points rather than to focus on consciously altering the pace of speech. That gives the speaker, who has many things to do at once, the relatively simple extra task of remembering to stop every now and then rather than to have concentrate continually on monitoring tempo when she be should focused on engaging the audience.

Actually, pauses are the speaker’s best friend even when rushing isn’t the speaker’s main fault.

Speakers need pauses to breathe. Breath keeps us alive, obviously, but under stressful conditions, when the flight or fight mechanism kicks in, the body leaps into defensive emergency behaviour. That can result in fast, shallow breathing. Terrible things happen to the voice and to mental focus without full, regular breaths. In other words, a speaker will feel better and speak better if she is prepared to pause to allow the breath to settle.

Audiences love pauses. They create the space for meaning to land. They can also add drama and suspense. The effectiveness of the pause is further enhanced if the speaker holds eye contact over the duration. Even when the speaker is pausing merely because she has been instructed to do so as an exercise – and is not driven by an authentic internal impulse – the audience frequently report that the pause/eye contact combination made the message seem more significant and more emotional. Depending on the context, the audience will go on to endow the speaker with gravitas, sensitivity or other flatteringly appropriate qualities, whether or not the speaker is aiming to demonstrate these or not. The audience is often galvanised or moved within the silence after the message rather than during the delivery of the message itself.

The very neutrality of a pause appears to provide an invaluable blank canvas on to which the audience projects a positive interpretation – as long as the speaker isn’t undermining herself in other non-verbal ways.

It seems, then, it would be a no brainer for speakers to embrace pauses when making presentations. Yet, in fact, this is something many people struggle to do. Sometimes they do indeed deliberately sabotage the pause with eye-rolling or grimaces, if only to prove the ghastly unreasonableness of my suggestion. There seems to be something about standing in silence in front of a group of staring people, even for a moment, which makes speakers deeply uncomfortable.

In exercises with my clients and students, I notice that however positively the audience responds to pauses, the speaker can find it difficult to incorporate the feedback.

So why do speakers find pausing such a challenge?

People are more used to having conversations than making presentations. These are very different modes of communication with different rules. Because we are so expert in conversations, we frequently import the rules of conversation into presentations with not such felicitous results.

In a conversation we take turns in who speaks, while in a presentation one person has an unusually long turn while the others listen. When conversing, we instinctively fill gaps between our words with “ums” and “errs” to signal to the other person that we haven’t finished and it isn’t the other person’s turn yet. This trick backfires in presentations. If we supress any natural pauses which arise over the course of a speech with conversational “ums” we begin to muddy the clarity of our argument. In the same way, a written page would be difficult to read if the layout were cluttered and without any white space relieving the blocks of text. Anyway, since audiences already know not to interrupt, the “um” merely has the negative impact of making the speaker look unconfident of the right to speak.

Even more interesting is the speaker’s perception of how long she has paused. Even when encouraged to leave a long gap, the speaker will foreshorten the pause so that for the audience it barely registers at all. When challenged, most speakers will insist that they have paused for a really long time.

I used to explain this phenomenon in the vaguest terms, opining that the experience of time in the spotlight was different to time spent in the audience. My recent reading of Claudia Hammond’s book Time Warped has finally provided me with some evidential support on the distorting effect of fear on the perception of time. In experiments where people believe themselves to be danger, time slows down for them to the extent that they will overestimate that a minute has passed when actually only 40 seconds of clock time have elapsed.

Although people making presentations are not literally in danger, their fears lead them to behave as if they are, with the same consequences for their sense of timing.

These are not easy habits to break but, with practice, speakers do get much better. Partly their sense of timing becomes better through repetition, but they can also become adept at using techniques for focusing and relaxing which correct the distortion caused by their fears.

There are many aspects to making good presentations and speeches. However, mastering this one simple but thorny trick – the pause – will create the opportunity for you to make a deeper, more positive impact on your audience.

 


The Revolution Will Not Be Delivered On PowerPoint: some reflections on feminism, presence and communication

Is there a correct way to use feminism to improve women’s lives? There seems to be no shortage of theories, role models, mentoring schemes or coaching programmes, all jostling for prominence. Some even claim to offer the definitive analysis of what’s wrong and to promise a total cure.

I have twenty years’ experience as a training consultant in communication, influencing and public speaking for clients of many hues and flavours. I pass on insights, skills and practices to enable them to persuade others, and to have choices about the impact they make. Much of what I teach has its origins in the other side of my double life – theatre-making. The approaches are to do with performance and creativity. Although the techniques themselves are genderless, the people deploying them are gendered, of course, as are their audiences. Their relationships are conducted within particular cultures with particular ways of doing things that often appear – to their natives, at least – immutable.

As a feminist myself, my values inform my own practice as a coach and tutor. There are many occasions, whether with single sex or mixed groups, that I have to admit that I have sneaked in a little bit of feminism under the radar when the stated purpose of the workshop was simply to equip people to be better public speakers. At other times, it’s been easy to be explicit about my agenda.

Coaching to develop voice and presence may be a pragmatic, individualistic response to the challenges thrown up by gender and culture. It has recently come in for some stick from a few Ivy League academics; Hermina Ibarra, Robin J. Ely, and Deborah M. Kolb take a dim view of me and my ilk in Women Rising: The Unseen Barriers in the Harvard Business Review, 1 September 2013.

Their piece investigates why women are still held back in their careers despite the good intentions of companies. They recount how many women are caught in a double-bind, damned if they do conform to stereotypes and damned if they don’t. The authors try to maintain a distinction between how women are perceived and their actual identities as people, speaking carefully about “conventionally feminine style”. Despite all this tightrope-walking, they don’t altogether manage to avoid generalisations themselves.

They critique the work of communication coaches by claiming that attempts to give women support in career advancement is based on “the premise is that women have not been socialized to compete successfully in the world of men, so they must be taught the skills and styles their male counterparts acquire as a matter of course.”

I don’t teach women to behave as men. Moreover, I disagree that the non-verbal expression of informal power (or ‘status’) – if this is what they mean by the vague phrase “skills and styles” – is an intrinsically male attribute. I also take a nuanced view on how status should be deployed when influencing others; dominance is not always best policy – for anyone.

My contention is that everyone benefits when there’s equality of contribution from the most diverse range of voices. My role is to empower my clients, whoever they are. When individuals are relaxed, they have choices about how to communicate. Rather than finding themselves driven by flight or flight mechanisms into behaving according to what they might consider culturally acceptable modes, they can pick what works in the moment. If anything, as communication coaches we are de-socialising people.

Ibarra, Ely and Kolb follow up this misconception with another claim for which they provide no evidence:

“Overinvestment in one’s image diminishes the emotional and motivational resources available for larger purposes. People who focus on how others perceive them are less clear about their goals, less open to learning from failure, and less capable of self-regulation.”

How does one quantify “overinvestment”? It seems that, for the authors, any focus on perception is suspect. Yet, perceptions do count. My clients and I manage to work together on clarifying purpose and crafting the message itself as well as influencing the audience’s perceptions of the speaker, not just through language but also non-verbal signals.

I’d like to relate some case studies from my professional life as a coach and trainer when I’ve worked explicitly with women in their aims to empower themselves. I’ll demonstrate that the coaching/training approach can accommodate discussion, practice, personal reflection and the test of the real world.

 

The corporate HR vice-president

“I remember when I started out in the late 1970s what things used to be like in the workplace for women. There was a senior guy who used to regularly toss a 50p coin across my desk and leer at me. ‘Go and get my fags, Blondie!’ he’d say. This was in spite of my having a post-graduate qualification in employment law.”

“Blondie” is now the HR Vice President of the EMEA division of a major multinational corporate. She is an energetic woman, with a warm sense of humour and a stylish taste for sharply-tailored, jewel-coloured dresses. Attitudes have shifted since the seventies, and cigarettes are a lot more expensive. Blondie is not the VP’s real name, of course.

The VP had identified that her mainly female team of HR managers were struggling with influencing upwards, and she wanted them to be equipped with non-verbal communication techniques to manage better. I’ve collaborated with her on several occasions, creating and delivering workshops for her team and coaching her directly in how to train others.

According to the VP, these workshops have had a positive impact, not least because they now have a common language to discuss body language and power. She reinforces the broad portfolio of soft skills training programmes by mentoring women in her team herself. One, she describes as “competent, but on the dull side!” She seems determined to light her mentee’s spark, and fan the flames of her ambitions.

Her approach is constructive rather than merely critical. For instance, she believes men have vulnerabilities as well as women, but that it needs to be acknowledged that the different genders handle their vulnerabilities differently.

“But it’s not all sorted,” she says. “And it’s still more difficult for a woman to make her voice heard than it is for her male colleagues. I’m the only woman in a senior team of alpha males. Most of them don’t have any sense of caution or self-restraint, and they’re not great at listening. I have had to say – on several occasions – will you just let me finish this sentence?” she sighs.

She believes that women in power can benefit everyone, not just the female workforce. She reminds me what happened when she influenced the (male) Sales Director to join in our workshops on body language and power. The games, she reckons, unlocked everyone’s imagination and playfulness – which led to us roping in bemused but willing hotel staff in the role-play. This did much to open people’s minds to possibilities and develop their confidence. The Sales Director too became a passionate advocate. He rolled the training out across the division, leading to improved performance across the board. This action contributed directly to his promotion in the organisation. Listening to and valuing women’s contribution, the VP believes, is self-evidently good for business.

The VP emphasises that although overt sexism is no longer normal, there is still much work to be done to make the office a place where women and men work together on genuinely equal terms.

This seems to be a commonplace in the non-profit sector as much as in the corporate, according to many senior women with whom I’ve collaborated. I’m struck by the number of female CEOs of charities who profess to struggle with managing their relationships with male trustees. Several have disclosed to me how much energy they have to expend in containing male egos, when they would have preferred to focus unhindered on leading their organisations.

“But yes, things have definitely improved,” the VP adds, with a smile. “Taking the chance, getting noticed, was harder work back then. Now it’s more normal that everyone is considered for promotion, male or female.”

 

A member of a Women’s Empowerment group at SOAS

Naturally, younger women are doing it for themselves as well. Millennials have reinvigorated feminism by using social media campaigns to call out wrongs, such Everyday Sexism. More broadly, they are looking at conditions for women and approaches to change with a fresh eye. Inclusivity is a watchword. I’m intrigued as to how far this extends to supporting each other offline in what is still, for me, the ‘real’ world.

In Spring 2017, a few female MA students from the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at SOAS, University of London, took the initiative to set up a women’s empowerment group in response to what they felt was a male-dominated programme. They secured the support of the SOAS establishment along with a small budget to fund their project, which encompassed talks and panel discussions with high-level women (including the Director of SOAS, Baroness Valerie Amos); practical training workshops; and a Facebook group for sharing experiences and opinions.

I was involved in creating and delivering a workshop on women’s impact and presence. Along with the practical exercises and games, we discussed why “assertiveness” is so often touted as an ideal. Why should one always have to make sure one is coming across as nice while exercising power? And by the same token, why assume that it is always effective to project high status? From the feedback, it was evident that the women especially valued the physical nature of the workshop, and the chance to play.

Afterwards, I met with Carla Moll Pinto to talk further. Carla had been a lively participant in my workshop. She remarked that the role-play helped her discover that changing her body-language depending on the scenario was within her scope, and that it inspired her to see that she could “be anyone, with practice”. However, I was also interested in her wider experience of the Women’s Empowerment Group and its impact on her.

Carla is a part-time Masters student who is studying while continuing to work in a full-time job in advertising and marketing. Her professional goals are to work in corporate social responsibility and “to change things from the inside”. She didn’t initiate the group and doesn’t completely share the perception of some of her peers that the MA programme or the sector is male-dominated. She acknowledges that some women felt uninspired by the lack of diversity. Although there were brilliant female lecturers teaching on the MA programme, negotiation workshops were conducted exclusively by retired British diplomats, AKA “old white men”. She rejects the idea that this is problematic and puts it down to mere historical circumstance. “We can change the future,” she says, “And maybe in 15 years, we millennials will be the role models to future leaders.”

So what does feminism mean for Carla?

“I’m still in the process of understanding what I think,” she concedes.

One particular panel discussion, however, helped her move closer to crystallising her own views. The first two speakers extolled the benefits of working hard and being better than the boys. As chance would have it, both these speakers subsequently left the room after their contributions due to pressing engagements. Upon their departure, the third speaker tossed aside her notes aside in a dramatic gesture.

“Well,” said the lecturer, of her co-panellists, “What the hell was that? That was bullshit!”

A frisson of shock rippled through the room. The speaker was Noga Glucksam, an International Security lecturer at SOAS, and evidently a charismatic communicator. (“She was like an actress, actually,” Carla adds.) Immediately, Carla felt a sense of identification with this rebellious stance. What really resonated with Carla was the speaker’s opinion that we are all shaped by own individual past experiences, gender is merely one element in the mix, and that there is no specific way that women should behave.

Carla is a proactive, extrovert young woman with a dynamic attitude, yet she doesn’t consistently feel confident in every situation.

“I know things, but I don’t always know how to convey them, and I get nervous. I’m a good talker, but when it comes to technical things, sometimes I struggle. And it happens at home too, with my dad and my brothers. They always talk about politics and economics, and I feel I always lag behind. I’d rather be quiet than say something I’m not sure about.”

She attributes her challenges as much to other factors – having a disability, or speaking in English rather her native Spanish language – rather than exclusively to being a woman.

Since taking part in the Women’s Empowerment group, Carla has seen changes in close friends but also within the wider group. She recounts how in the Facebook group, that people “are more motivated to share things. Sometimes you see things and you don’t share them… because people label you. Always on Facebook, you need to be very careful about what you upload on your wall, because then it’s there, and then people can create an idea of you, or they label you – ah, this is a left-wing feminist, or a right-wing conservative. It’s really, really easy to judge somebody on Facebook and decide which side you are on. On the Empowerment Group page, people will share more there. Sometimes you will like what is uploaded, sometimes you won’t. But there is a space to share and I think that’s the main change that I’ve seen. In terms of life and relationships, I haven’t seen anything yet, but then it’s difficult, because we had exams and then everyone disappeared! It will be interesting to see what will happen this coming academic year.“

I’m struck by Carla’s caution about generalisations, and her sometimes conflicted feelings about taking a definitive position on the issues. She explains that she likes to base her opinions on evidence. The Group has given Carla an opportunity to research and become more informed. She says she has now moderated her individualistic, pragmatic stance, and now believes that there are some common issues that do need a collaborative approach for change.

I asked Carla what she thought should change for women specifically in the workplace. Her response this time was unequivocal: “Equal Pay, and in our sector, International Relations, there needs to be the involvement of more women.”

 

Young Girls in Newham

In 2014, I contributed to a project called the Emerging Scholars Intervention Programme (ESIP). Based in Newham, East London, this project identified girls who were promising, although not yet fulfilling their potential. The programme was provided for students in Years 8 through to 10 from three schools in the borough. It was delivered over ten sessions per year, and involved many different professionals from different fields of expertise. The programme’s aims were to:

  1. Develop resilience through challenge and support;
  2. Inspire new interest in subjects and topics through original perspectives and depth, increasing ability and achievement;
  3. Stimulate skills development for life, work and learning;
  4. Support development and expression of aspiration and a lifelong passion;
  5. Create a movement of change to inspire schools, parents and communities.

My first participation was as a delegate at the ESIP conference ‘Business Meets Emerging Scholars’, which was an opportunity for the students to meet professionals and business people. There were presentations from some of the girls and plenty of conversation. Taking part in our particular round table discussion, and particularly impressive, were an employment judge, Julia Jones; and Andréa Watts, a former art therapist and the founder of a company called UnglueYou, which helps people visualise their goals by using collage. Both women are black. Overall, the invited male and female professionals were a diverse group in terms of heritage, values and work life. So, the students had both the benefit of hearing different perspectives, and the opportunity to find points of identification with several different adults.

I contributed further to ESIP later in the year by providing a workshop for year 10 students called ‘Me and My Voice’. We explored how we send signals about who we are to others by playing improvisation and storytelling games, taking on different ‘status’ roles, voices and physicalities. Although this work involves exercises I normally use with adults, it was interesting for me to refashion them for a new age group and context. The girls grasped the objectives quickly, and responded to each other in a lively, creative way. This is not to say that they all necessarily found it easy, yet everyone took on the challenges with courage.

I had some of the most rewarding feedback of my career, and was impressed by the degree to which the students went away and thought deeply about how they could apply their discoveries to their lives. A comment from one girl was: “Fundamentally, I have learnt that I can make a choice and not let people dictate what my path is in life. Furthermore, that status is something we choose to present and we should make use of the choice.” Another student said: “I would love more sessions like this. The more uncomfortable the sessions make us feel, the more fears we conquer and the more confident we become.”

I met the girls again at the end of their programme when I was part of a panel evaluating their final presentations in which they each shared their own Big Audacious Goal. These were varied including: becoming a Member of Parliament; qualifying and embarking on a career as a pharmacist; and setting up an educational charity for young people in the developing world.

There were many more events, outings and mentoring sessions than I was involved in myself. All together, this was a resource-rich support for girls who would not have necessarily have allowed themselves the ambitions they grew into over the course of the programme.

This extraordinary project was the brain-child – surprisingly – of a man, Dr Simon Davey. If not exactly one of us, he is certainly a fellow traveller.

 

How to do feminism

While Women Rising: The Unseen Barriers provoked me with its misconceptions about own field of expertise, there were also other wider points the authors raise with which I want to engage. Reflecting on a few contrasting examples from my own collaborations with clients raises one big question for me: how can I pull together these diverse experiences and opinions to provide me – and perhaps others – with some guidelines on how to contribute towards redressing gender equality in the workplace in a way that feels both manageable and ambitious?

 

Purpose versus Perception

Identifying one’s purpose is vital for leading others in any endeavour and living meaningfully oneself. There is indeed a distinction to be made between purpose and perception. However, I’d like to explain in more detail why I think Ibarra et al set up a false conflict between “image” and “larger purpose”.

In my other life as an artist, I’m able to accomplish both the writing of a theatre piece and its subsequent performance in front of an audience. For me, these are complementary, not contradictory, activities. Once an idea is fully developed, it’s natural to want to put it out into the world and persuade others of its value. Establishing the credibility of the speaker is part of this task. In fact, if our early attempts at persuasion are not as successful as we would like, we need to go back to the drawing board to consider our larger purpose before we try again. This iterative process clarifies the message as well as its transmission. Sometimes we need to change the words, sometimes the delivery, and occasionally we need to rethink altogether. We call this rehearsal in the theatre. It is all about learning from failure and developing the necessary discipline to handle the stress of the difficult circumstances in which we must sometimes operate.

Telling women not to bother with how they are perceived is unhelpful. Anyone who wants to be persuasive should bother about how they are perceived. This means the opposite to enslaving oneself to others’ assumptions. Rather, it is about using one’s judgement about how as well as what to communicate.

None of the women I’ve trained report feeling constrained by rules or ‘masculinised’. Instead, they describe how they feel liberated to play a range of status behaviours, or how great it feels to use their voices with energy and freedom, or how empowered it is to be able to choose the impact they make on others.

Naturally, to begin with, all these techniques can do is give individual women leverage in an uneven playing field. However, the more women make conscious choices about their communication, the more others will respond to these women on their own terms rather than according to previous norms.

 

Respecting others’ experiences and viewpoints

We still have to contend with the long-held cultural assumption that masculinity and leadership are linked. It’s just as dangerous to generalise about femininity and female leadership styles, and to conclude that these are necessarily more benign. The women I’ve worked with have been extremely diverse – street-wise and naïve; self-effacing and show-offy; collaborative and individualistic; thick-skinned and sensitive to criticism; good listeners and bad. They have not all been held back by limiting assumptions about women and leadership, although undoubtedly some have been.

In the 1970s, “Blondie” had to be very determined to overcome the demeaning way she was treated early in her career. Knowing her story, I’m impressed that she has nevertheless become a top leader, challenging expectations of what it takes – that is to say, having the balls.

I don’t always share the same beliefs as my women clients. Sometimes I find their interpretations of their experiences at odds with how I would see things in their place. Women are not all the same with regard to what they attribute their challenges, or where they look for solutions. Different generations have different views about feminism.

For instance, in the same breath, MA student Carla Moll Pinto describes feeling less comfortable expressing her opinion than her brothers and denies that gender inequality is necessarily the main barrier to her confidence.

Ibarra, Ely and Kolb would ascribe Carla’s feelings to second-generation gender bias. They claim: “Most women are unaware of having personally been victims of gender discrimination and deny it even when it is objectively true and they see that women in general experience it”. I find this a troubling filter through which to look at women’s lives. How is it useful for women’s self-empowerment to insist on casting them as victims?

I do challenge clients on their views, but I would rather respect their version of their experiences than impose my own. It makes more sense to me to nudge women to experiment with different approaches to communication. They can evaluate for themselves afterwards if their perspective has changed along with the outcome of the interaction. Ultimately, we must accept Carla is the expert on her own complex reality.

 

Space to explore freely

A logistical/philosophical dilemma forced me to examine my own prejudices when I became involved with the Women’s Empowerment Group at SOAS. I was amazed to learn that the women planned to invite men to the workshops on Women’s Impact and Presence. I decided to engage with the Group on this matter with an open mind. There is much to be said for their commitment to inclusivity, even when this may look to older feminists like giving up hard won territory where we can be ourselves, without adjustments. I got as far as plotting how I could deploy the men in certain games to explore gender and power to challenge traditional roles. After discussing it, in the end, we agreed that it would be better to make this workshop women-only.

And yet, I have to admit to inconsistency on this point.

Those of us contributing to the ESIP programme at the Newham schools often remarked amongst ourselves that we should have been educating the boys alongside the girls, and teaching them to be feminists too. I wonder if, in a limited way, we could have helped forestall gender inequality before we needed a cure. Dr Simon Davey, however, counters: “I strongly believe girls take more risks when boys aren’t around. And boys are inherently less mature at the same age of adolescence.”

Age and timing may be factors in whether it’s productive to invite men into the process. And while men’s buy-in will ultimately be vital for real social change, involving them at every stage could compromise our journey.

 

Inner conflict, collective responsibility, individual action

How much should we work at changing the environment for all, and how much should we focus individually on surviving within the present one? Perhaps we don’t have to choose.

In my research for this piece, my client collaborators have been keen to recount anecdotes. In the telling, they have used our conversations to explore what meanings they could draw as they re-visited and re-appraised their lives.

It has struck me how much sharing stories has mattered to Carla and her cohort at SOAS, and how validating it has been for them individually and as group. “I can tell my experiences,” she says, “but I cannot tell you how to handle yours. You need to find your own way.”

What I’ve learned is that prescriptive approaches are not the way. Storytelling, experimenting with different styles, allowing space for inconsistency and uncertainty are the most honest and inclusive attempts we can make as feminists to make the world better for ourselves and others.

We shouldn’t only focus on purpose and perception, but also on possibility. If we’re searching beyond our present circumstances to alternate visions of reality, we should look to the arts. Read Margaret Attwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale or Naomi Alderman’s The Power to imagine yourself as a woman in another world – either horribly oppressed, or terrifyingly physically empowered. Watch Mad Men if you want to remember what office life was like before feminism. Listen to Beyoncé’s Lemonade to hear a feminism that can be wildly popular. Look at the photographic art of Nan Goldin for images of different ways of being a woman, or of Annie Leibovitz for the glitziest icons of female success. Then write your own story, sing your own song, or paint your own picture of the future.

This is why I import many exercises from the theatre and improvisation into my work as a coach. When I encourage playfulness in my workshops, the participants delight me with their originality. Given the tools and the permission to experiment, people are reinvigorated in their purpose. They discover a deeper emotional connection to their vision, and are inspired to be more inventive in how they structure their ideas, and therefore how they go on to communicate them. I see men and women collaborating on much more equal terms, as the novelty of the exercises disrupts established dynamics. Creativity is a greater leveller and a necessary ingredient if you are looking to change the status quo. The revolution will not be delivered on PowerPoint.

But enough gazing into the future. To borrow a trope from ESIP, my own Big Audacious Goal in this essay has been to boil down my insights to something simple I can act on right now, at least until a better idea comes along.

So, I have come up with this short checklist for my way of doing feminism:

  • Collaborate, don’t impose.
  • Explore, don’t prescribe.
  • Imagine big, but be pragmatic along the way.

 

 


Leadership – a collaborative approach to communication

Popular images of leadership don’t do much to promote the benefits of collaboration. We often think of a solitary figure: an individual striding resolutely down a wide road, arms swinging, perhaps with an obedient crowd trailing behind; or someone atop a hill, one hand positioned as an eyeshade against the blinding light of the promised tomorrow. Whatever, up a hill or down a road, the leader is always essentially alone and aloof.

I wonder if these are misleading and even unhelpful representations of leadership? A leader who is cut off from the team is disconnected from broader perspectives and opportunities. A leader who speaks at people, not with them, is in trouble. This leader is ill-equipped to convince others to buy into any vision for the future and liable to topple into an abyss after tripping up over unintended consequences. Ouch.

Post-match analysis of crashed political campaigns and brands tarnished by tone-deaf pronouncements from CEOs usually points to the absence of proper communication with stakeholders, where people can talk back to power.

My preferred image is of a leader facing the crowd – engaging and responding – and also creating the conditions for a continuing conversation. There might be the murmur of good-humoured laughter, perhaps a gasp of surprise, some interjections or even heckles, and ultimately, of course, the sound of applause. Above all, there’s a feeling of togetherness and warmth even when the message may be serious. So how does one go about achieving this cosy ideal?

There may be various paths. Certainly a good hard look at current practices might be a good idea. There is so much we accept by default that is in fact counterproductive – boardroom seating arrangements, PowerPoint slides loaded up with text, scrupulous avoidance of emotion along with a firm commitment to such tight controls over messaging that speakers are robbed of a sense of ownership. Disengagement and boredom are institutionalised.

Some experimentation might be in order.

I have a regular commitment delivering a one-day workshop called Voice Vision and Vitalityon the Oxford Advanced Management and Leadership Programme at Saïd Business School. Under the aegis of Voicecraft, I and four other colleagues work with small groups exploring how they can communicate as leaders with more depth and creativity.

The programme participants form an extraordinarily diverse group. They are a global mix of Senior Executives, each embodying different organisational cultures and different national values. They celebrate their differences at a Cultural Diversity Dinner, which is always held on the eve of our workshop. Each participant brings a personal cultural icon to talk about as an entry point into their national identity. At the most recent dinner, a chopstick-wielding Chinese participant rubbed shoulders with a gun-toting American. (He didn’t bring a real gun). There are always some are interesting hybrids too – such as the Englishman who had spent nearly all his adult working life in South and Central America. There are never enough women in the group, although they always offer powerfully different perspectives from their male colleagues. All these characters are thrown together to learn from each other as well as from the esteemed Faculty and other sundry professionals, such as us Voicecraft tutors.

Collaboration isn’t the explicit objective of our workshop. It does, however, underlie all our beliefs and values about what true communication is and how to do it well. Crafting the experience for the audience is a collective effort in the theatre, where the director is not the sole voice of inspiration.

Voicecraft is an umbrella organisation of independent communication training consultants. We all have theatre credentials, and some of us still work as innovators within the arts, as I do. However, just as we are more than actors, the Voicecraft team is more than the sum of its parts. Inspired and nurtured by Arts and Business pioneer, Yvonne Gilan, the team has grown exponentially in experience and expertise since it was initiated in 1997. Creative collaboration is at the heart of our own practice. We continue to mentor each other so that we can continue to coach all our clients to the best of our collective talents. So, you could say that we practice what we preach.

Even though we have delivered this particular workshop format many times, it’s always a unique experience because the range of personalities and talents that we work with always changes. We have a set schedule of exercises and games that incrementally build risk and confidence of the individuals. Along the way, we feed them tools, techniques and approaches from the theatre. We provide simple parameters for testing out how they will meet some fundamental challenges that leaders experience facing an audience. Through playing and telling stories, they discover how to harness their own vulnerability. In the process, they may discover what charisma looks like on different people. Sometimes extraordinary things happen.

Inevitably, this process stirs the participants into reflection and imagining how they will bring their new insights and skills back to work. In the latest workshop, the following issues came up for deliberation amongst us:

 

 

Why do people resist rehearsing?

During the preparation stage, I noticed that participants were happy to discuss ideas in small groups or pairs. They would have been happy just talking for their entire allotted time if I didn’t prod them into getting up and testing out how they were going communicate their vision. This is something that I have seen before with other groups. Over the years I’ve heard a range of opinions against rehearsal: it makes your ultimate performance stale; there isn’t time; it’s just not very important or necessary; there are other just as effective ways of preparing for presentations, such as thinking it through in your mind.

As a theatre practitioner, I’m deeply immersed in the rehearsal process for developing ideas and polishing them until they’re good enough to put in front of an audience without embarrassment. This time, rather than simply calling out the behaviour, I was interested in delving a little deeper into the psychology behind this.

Everybody in the group acknowledged the importance of rehearsal before a major presentation or speech, but nobody really wanted to do it.

One participant explained to me that it’s not that preparation isn’t taken seriously. It just that instead of a culture of practising, the attention is all on the slide deck. He described to me how the slides were assembled by committee and then, over a period of weeks, batted up and down the hierarchy, with slight edits inserted here and there, and then deleted again, until the final deck closely resembled the original version. There was no energy left for rehearsal although still plenty of anxiety. It seemed to me that nerves had been displaced onto Powerpoint, instead of usefully channelled. And because no time or energy is ever allocated for rehearsal, it remains outside everyone’s comfort zone.

 

Is there a particular value to creative collaboration?

However, when I did manage to coax this group into practising, they took to it with gusto. My success at converting people seemed to be at least partly due to their discovery – once they’d started – that dynamic, collaborative preparation can be a hugely pleasurable activity.

The other persuasive factor was the evidence that it works. The ultimate result was that their performances were of a high standard. That was my judgment as a professional theatremaker, and the group members enthusiastically concurred.

I had divided the group into pairs for this exercise and laid down simple parameters: take turns to present your pieces to each other and ask for feedback and direction. Beyond this, the process of each small unit was unique. People spoke from both the perspectives of director and performer. As performers, they credited their achievement in most part to how their rehearsal partners worked with them. As directors, their pride in and respect for their performers was evident. There were many different experiences, but everyone felt enriched and believed the outcome was better than it would have been without working together.

Developing your own creative, iterative process with others, who have a stake in the vision and in you as a leader, allows you to hone both the vision and its communication. Collaboration makes the message and its impact better.

These were the key findings when we de-briefed afterwards. However, the real test will be how they use the learning when leading their organisations. Will they have the courage to apply the tools and insights?

Taking the lessons back

Some of this work may seem dauntingly radical, particularly for some organisational cultures. It may go against deep-seated attitudes and long-established practices. It will also require judgement about how you can harness your vulnerability as you embark on this adventure, rather than becoming a hostage to it. So I will suggest a few practical tips:

  • Don’t locate the presentation in the Powerpoint. Keep away from slides until a late stage in the process. Plan it out on paper instead. Powerpoint, Keynote and Prezi are just visual aids, so treat them that way. You are the true focus of the presentation not the screen.
  • Ideally, get a small team together in a room, and work it out between you. Be creative about it. Don’t forget that if you don’t engage your audience’s emotions you certainly have no chance of changing their minds.
  • If you are planning to communicate a transformative message, test it out with others beyond the charmed circle before making a final commitment. Send out scouts to get feedback on tone as well as content.
  • Don’t be frightened of practising it aloud, to others. You need to be open to changing both the substance and the style.
  • It is very possible that as you practice out loud, you will come up against flaws in the substance of your message. Deal with these immediately as they will not go away. Be glad that you have uncovered them as otherwise they will come back to bite you.
  • Time-manage the process. You shouldn’t be editing your way up to the podium. After a certain point, fix the structure and words and concentrate on practicing the performance so you can allow yourself to be natural and in the moment when you’re in front of the audience.

The False Promise of Authenticity

For several years now, there has been a prevailing maxim in leadership theory. Not only have academics been keen champions, it’s also caught on amongst lay people working in all kinds of organisations and institutions, corporate or start-up, public, non-profit or private sector. Anyone who wants to sum up what they want from a leader, or how they want to be perceived themselves will reach for this one word – authentic.

A major reason for its persistence, I believe, is because the term is laden with moral force. This has had a particular appeal recently, when the reputations of big figures in business and public life in general have taken a severe battering. Authenticity is virtuous. It’s transparent. It’s accessible. It’s reliable. It’s real. No one could condemn it any more than they could condemn motherhood or apple pie. The antonyms – fake, phoney, false, misleading, untrue, dishonest, deceitful – are obviously undesirable. If authenticity can be demonstrated to be effective as well as virtuous, then it must be the obvious prerequisite for any leader.

Whenever I wonder out loud how to achieve authenticity, people always have a ready answer: “Be yourself.”

I’ve never been particularly comfortable with this directive. It’s sounds easy but when you try to apply it, it’s rather complicated. How do you identify what is ‘being yourself’?

Personally, I’ve had difficulty nailing it down. When I interact with my mother, my best friend or the dry cleaner, my behaviour, physicality, language and tone shift according to the person and the circumstances. Often all these are reflexive rather than reflective choices. So which one is the real me? If they all are, as I believe, what use is it to tell me to be the real me when the reality of me is so varied?

As a coach I aim to suggest actions that, if not necessarily easy, are at least specific and achievable. The ‘be yourself’ mantra is neither. Authenticity seems not only to be predicated on a full and exact knowledge of who one is as a person, but also to require one to hold a view of oneself which is consistent across situations.

Whenever my students and clients express an urge to be authentic, I navigate them towards more down-to-earth goals that can be attained through practical methods – such as releasing the breath, so they can be audible and engage others with their voices.

Now, leadership gurus are beginning to question the value of fetishizing authenticity, or even ricocheting to an opposite viewpoint. In their paper, The impossibility of the ‘true self’ of authentic leadership, Professor Jackie Ford and Nancy Harding have expressed their doubts. They suggest: “…firstly, that authentic leadership as an indication of a leader’s true self is impossible and, secondly, that attempts at its implementation could lead to destructive dynamics within organizations.” And in the New York Times, Adam Grant has opined: “Unless you’re Oprah, ‘be yourself’ is terrible advice”.

One story that is frequently trotted out by the backlash-against-authenticity lobby is that of Cynthia Danaher. When she was promoted to general manager of a group at Hewlett-Packard, she declared to her 5,300 employees that the job was “scary” and that “I need your help.” It’s been widely reported that this over-sharing led to her team’s initial loss of confidence in her as a leader. I’d be cautious about ascribing this lack of buy-in entirely to the authenticity of her communication. Let’s be frank: sexism may have played a part too in how she was received as a leader. When we’re supposed to be living in a post-feminist world of having it all and leaning in, it’s uncomfortable to acknowledge such a possibility. This is speculation, but perhaps if we were all a little more skeptical about authenticity some wider considerations might have tempered Danaher’s approach.

Coming from the world of the arts, I’ve long since harboured an alternative perspective. When I’m coaching people in communication, I borrow a great deal from my own drama school training and my practice as a theatre professional. I bring in exercises that involve invention and play-acting in order to explore how anyone can adapt their approach to different people across a range of contexts. Not only do regular people – with no previous drama experience or training – enjoy doing this, they also prove themselves quickly adept at many of the games. To observers, they appear to have mastered how to present themselves in a variety of styles to others, and to select whatever approach will get them the impact they want. This can be a surprise and a pleasure for my students and clients. Of course the next step is how to integrate this new flexibility into real-life situations where these shifts in voice and body-language can affect the outcome of an interaction that matters.

For leaders in particular, this facility is a distinct advantage because it allows them to be responsive to the needs of their stakeholders, and to model behaviour they want from their teams. In fact, it might even be a way for leaders to train themselves to be the kind of leaders they would like to be. Perhaps this is a better strategy for handling ‘imposter’s syndrome’ than an open confession of self-doubt to all and sundry.

In a recent public-speaking workshop, a student confessed to me his worry that making external adjustments to his posture and voice would make him an inauthentic person. It was intriguing because while he clearly felt deeply, he found it difficult to put his finger on what exactly was disturbing about this approach. When pressed, he reiterated that his integrity was important to him. Other workshop participants pointed out that if being authentic for him meant never making deliberate changes, he would be doomed to never improve his presentations.

However, his concern got me thinking about how differently actors view the process of communication in the theatre. To focus on authenticity in this context, most of my colleagues would agree, would be a category error. Granted, there is some cultural suspicion of how actors manage to transform themselves so convincingly. When people wish to decry charming but unscrupulous public figures, ‘actor’ is sometimes deployed as synonym for ‘liar’.

I believe this is based on a misunderstanding of what the job of acting is. Greater awareness of what actors do would not only dispel some minor stigma against the profession but, more importantly, also empower ‘real people’ to use some of their approaches to persuade people of their own excellent, morally worthy ideas.

When an actor takes on a role such as Hedda Gabler in Henrik Ibsen’s classic play, this is what doesn’t happen:

  • She doesn’t actually become Hedda Gabler;
  • She doesn’t think she has become Hedda Gabler;
  • She doesn’t believe the story – in which she is acting – is literally, factually true.

So contrary to the tenets of conventional leadership beliefs, in the theatre there is room neither for authenticity nor delusion. She is playing a part, and she knows it.

However, actors and directors are extremely preoccupied with truth. Indeed, the highest compliment an actor can pay another is to describe his or her performance as truthful. This may seem paradoxical. After all, everyone (the actors, director, whole creative team and audience) acknowledges that they’re inhabiting a fictional world. So how can these beliefs be compatible?

Perhaps, what ‘truthfulness’ means in this context needs a little unpacking. In the world of the theatre, I would describe it as a commitment to the world of the imagination, rather than to bullet-pointed data and the literal here-and-now. But, a world that is nevertheless coherent and plausible – a reality that could exist. Above, all it is full of possibility.

In the theatre, everyone is mobilized towards this possibility. And the whole creative team, led by the director, is focused outwards on the audience’s experience of this possibility. By the time a production is up and running, the actors’ focus cannot be inwards. They must create an experience that’s rich enough for the audience to connect with their own lives, feelings and beliefs. Universal truth, not personal authenticity, is the point.

I think there are interesting lessons here for someone looking to share a vision for a business, a public institution or even a social campaign. These projects too are surely concerned with future possibilities and resonances rather than the present limitations of the individuals concerned – leaders or followers.

Theatre shows, whether they originate from a written script or through a collaborative devising process, are crafted through preparation. And this gives rise to another paradox; despite exhaustive rehearsals, during a performance actors are committed to being present – physically, mentally and emotionally. In fact, athletes experience something similar. In their lingo, they are ‘in flow’. Anyone who has ever become immersed in an activity – sporting or creative – will recognize the sensations of being at one with the time and place, rather than separate and distinct from it.

So in the theatre, personal effectiveness doesn’t necessarily have much to do with personal identity, let alone authenticity.

So, this is what actually happens when an actor plays Hedda Gabler:

  • She prepares – practices her lines and moves exhaustively – so that when she is in action onstage she is able to be in the moment;
  • She commits to the relationship she has with the other actors onstage;
  • She commits to sharing the story with the audience from the perspective of her role;
  • She means what she does onstage;
  • She adjusts how she uses her voice and body in order to make her demeanour congruent with her with intentions;

Rather than chasing after the false promise of authenticity, there are fruitful alternatives. Try ‘being truthful’ and ‘being in the moment’ if you’re looking for more useful mantras for communication and leadership.

 

 

 


Trial by ordeal – The Job Interview

There’s something about job interviews that can provoke an existential crisis, even in completely well-adjusted people. It’s a disruption of the ‘business-as-usual’ world, where we get on with our routines in the belief that we’re competent enough to get our tasks done and more or less handle the people involved. The interview turns all these assumptions upside down. We can find ourselves questioning everything.

This experience seems to apply across situations – whether you’re aiming to get back into work after a long gap, or whether you want to move from one job to another. One relatively recent phenomenon is the request to reapply for the role that you already hold, usually as a result of restructuring. That situation can be the most destabilising of all.

As the interview looms, this sort of thinking may surge up: “I don’t really have what they’re looking for.” Or, “I’ve never done anything like this, why would anyone would take a risk on me?” Or, under different circumstances: “I do this all the time, it’s like breathing, so how can I possibly put it into words?”

This self-questioning leads some potential interviewees to conclude: “The interview process is artificial rubbish anyway.” I suspect we are mentally defending ourselves against the fact that we are about to be judged by people in positions of power.

The interview is a performance in some respects. There may not be a clearly defined script to follow, but it is universally acknowledged that it does help to anticipate questions and compose some self-promoting answers. There is also the matter of being able to make an impact, not just through what you say but also through how you say it. Confidence is key.

The sense of turmoil and insecurity may be unavoidable, but it’s not always fatal. However, it can lead to some people postponing or avoiding essential preparation. And that, actually, is fatal.

So if the interview is a performance, rehearsal may be an effective strategy for making sure that you come across with both substance and style. Role-playing allows you to test out those self-promoting answers with a trusted friend or colleague in the part of the interviewer, and to evaluate how these answers sound out loud. Are you getting your message across? Usually you can trim out some waffle, and make your point more succinctly and effectively.

Storytelling is a key way of engaging your interviewers with what you can do. Scroll through your experience for stories that demonstrate how you’ve met past challenges. Position yourself as the hero or heroine with a difficult problem. Explain what you did to resolve the problem. Take your audience through it, step by step. It’s your actions that matter. You don’t need to be flowery. Just providing a single vivid detail will be effective. You never need to describe yourself as clever, fast-thinking, empathetic, or any other checklist quality that the interviewer is looking for. Let your account of your actions do the work for you. These stories don’t necessarily have to be from your current role, but they should demonstrate skills and qualities that would be transferrable to the job in question.

 

And now, to a key issue: just because it’s a crafted performance doesn’t mean that it can be inauthentic. In rehearsal, check your own feelings as well as the effect on others. Does what you are saying feel real and genuine? And this is the point where you may need to come to terms with some inner conflict. It’s ok to have uncertainties, but it’s not helpful to let them supress or muddle how you present yourself. Take the opportunity to clarify your values and goals for yourself before stepping in front of the panel. Under scrutiny, your lack of conviction will leak out through non-verbal signals that psychologists call “tells”. People often describe their response to others’ non-verbal signals as having a “gut feeling” about someone, in layman’s terms. Often they can’t articulate what it is exactly that they like or dislike, although the sensation is often immediate and powerful.

Of course, you can find yourself undermined by your non-verbal signals simply because you’re feeling very nervous. This is because you can only have control over your physicality (and the ability to minimise negative tells) if you’re physically relaxed. The most effective method of managing this tension is pausing to breathe out fully. In the Flight or Fight reaction of your body, you may find yourself breathing too fast or shallowly, or even holding your breath. However, if you take back control of your breathing, the body, mind and emotions will follow. Practice this technique regularly beforehand, so it seems natural to use in the interview.

So, how might interviewers respond to different candidates’ behaviour in the heat of the interview? And how might the candidates’ preparation affect the outcomes for them?

An acquaintance of mine, the CEO of a medium-sized not-for-profit organisation, was recruiting for a role. It came down to a choice between two different but outstanding candidates: a black woman and a white man. In the interviews, the female candidate scored well, though the male candidate consistently scored better. However, the CEO had a nagging feeling that he wasn’t the right one for the job. After being consulted, each member of the panel agreed that they felt less than confident that he would deliver well in the role. His range of correct but stock answers didn’t give the panel the insight into his character that they needed. She decided to invite the two candidates back for a further interview each. This time, the panel devised a series of questions they believed would uncover the concerns that they all shared but had found difficult to pin down. The questions called for a deep level of honesty and self-awareness from the candidates, and also tested their commitment to the values of the organisation they wanted to join. One such question was: “Tell us about your main allowable weakness. What would your biggest fan say, and what would your biggest critic say?” What the CEO and panel didn’t want to hear was the standard answer: “I’m a perfectionist.”

The female candidate was hesitant at first. Then she was open that there was a field in which she felt she would need extra training, as her current level of knowledge was probably not yet up to scratch. The male candidate side-stepped the question altogether. He refused to admit to any weakness.

Indeed, the answers to all the questions were eye-opening. Time and time again, the female candidate showed that she had insight into herself. She even identified that she tended to be reserved when under pressure, which matched the panel’s assessment of her. These were the very qualities of self-knowledge and openness that secured her the post.

In fact, the male candidate’s unwillingness to reveal any vulnerability was his most telling flaw. When the CEO rang him to tell him the news he had been unsuccessful, she described his response like this: “His mask dropped.” Unfortunately for him, his willingness to share came too late.

I’m speculating now, but perhaps the different outcomes for the two candidates lay in their different approaches to their preparation.

One approach interpreted self-presentation as striding forth in a suit of armour of ‘right’ answers. Yet for the panel, the candidate’s non-verbal signals were not congruent with his words. What was missing, perhaps, was the candidate’s willingness to relax, possibly because he deemed it too risky to be vulnerable.

The other approach prioritised making a connection over maintaining an iron-clad ‘ideal’ appearance, even though the candidate’s natural reserve made this an effort.

So this makes me wonder: what if having a pre-interview mental struggle could bring us closer to a deeper understanding of ourselves, and of what it is that we want from our working lives? What if this struggle is a necessary preliminary step for harnessing our vulnerability, and finding a way of connecting honestly with an interview panel composed of individuals, each of whom are genuinely committed to choosing the right person?

Of course you need to demonstrate to the panel that you are professionally suited to the role. You need to tick as many boxes for them as you can. No responsible interviewer will choose a likeable but incompetent candidate without discernable potential. However, the dynamic between you is a significant factor. After all, they will have to work with you, and probably spend a huge amount of time in your company. A little soul-searching can go a long way to help you connect with the interviewers, even within the formal parameters of the job interview.

And that, perhaps, might allow us to see some sort of purpose to the unwelcome and discomforting existential crisis, and to trust that we’ll get through to the other side.

 

Use this checklist to help you work through your preparation in a structured way:

Why do you want this job? Think hard about all the reasons that you’re going for this challenge. You will want to share some of your reflections with your interviewers, but not necessarily all of them.

Who are your interviewers? What do you know about their particular agendas and expectations?

… And who do they expect to see when you walk into the room? Which assumptions about you do you want to encourage, and which do you want to pre-empt and discourage?

What key messages about your qualities and skills do you want to get across? Rather than list your attributes and skills, prepare some stories that demonstrate how you’ve met past challenges.

Where is the interview taking place? The environment of the interview will affect the dynamic between you and your interviewers. Remember that you have choices in how you respond to it.

When is the interview? The timing will also affect the dynamic. Be aware how both your interviewers’ and your own energy may be affected, and be prepared to adjust accordingly.

How do you want to present yourself? Make sure that you keep yourself as relaxed and focused as possible during the interview. Pausing to breathe and think will help.


Knowing why you’re speaking

When a client comes to me with a presentation to work on, I’ll often ask him or her: “So why are you speaking?”

This doesn’t seem to be a question to which everybody finds easy to give an immediate and clear answer. Some people slip into telling me what they’re going to say, as if the Why is either too obvious or too difficult to articulate.

For any kind of communication, however short or casual, you need to consider your purpose. You are not speaking for the sake of it, but in order to achieve a purpose. For the simplest and shortest of communications, this may be the only essential factor for you to consider before opening your mouth. Most people would agree with that sentiment.

However, this purpose can get really complicated: “I want the audience to understand that if we take Approach A it’s a really risky choice unless we figure out first what the outcomes will be of Project X, and then we should go ahead but only if we’re sure about what the market will bear. And I’d like them to feel really motivated.”

On the other hand it can become mind-numbingly banal: “I want to give the senior team an update.” Or even worse: “My line manager told me I had to.”

I would argue that every speaker aims to have some kind of emotional effect on the audience, as well as to have them understand what the message means on a literal level. Certainly you’ll want to keep them engaged over the duration of your message. Probably you want to persuade them to either do something different, or to commit to carrying on doing what they’re already doing without wavering. Sometimes you’ll need to take a few steps back to identify what it is exactly that you do want. Thus, you may discover that your objective of “I want to give the senior team an update” is really “I want to enlighten the senior team with the range of possibilities.” It may seem a subtle difference but personally, as an audience, I’d prefer to be enlightened rather than merely updated.

Getting to the nub of identifying a Why that’s simple and compelling, yet fits perfectly with your message and your audience may now present even more of a challenge than it initially appeared.

How actors identify and act on the Why

It might useful to borrow some techniques from the world of the theatre to flesh out some sort of practical solution to planning the impact you want to have on those listening.

A Practical Handbook For The Actor is a manual written by Melissa Bruder, Lee Michael Cohn, Madeleine Olnek, Nathaniel Pollack, Robert Previto, Scott Zigler. They are a group of actors who’ve all worked with playwright, director and acting theorist David Mamet. The book’s purpose is to help its readers develop a methodical approach to the actor’s perennial question: “What am I supposed to be doing out there onstage?”

Existential though this sounds, this is a technical question with a technical answer, with some insights that are pertinent for public speakers and presenters.

The writers of A Practical Handbook divide the areas of concern into ‘the action’ and ‘the moment’. They suggest that the actor analyses the text to decide what the overall action is for a scene – for public speakers, think “speech” – that they call a ‘through-line’ or ‘through-action’. Then each section can have a separate ‘action’, which cumulatively build up to achieving the ‘through-action’. The ‘through-action’ is the practical implementation of your Why.

Then with all this prepared, the actor responds to the ‘moment’, whatever is created by the other actor onstage and by the environment. The actor’s job is to do that in accordance with his or her ‘through-line’. The actor may need to improvise in the face of the unexpected.

The action

For our purposes, we’re going to concentrate on ‘the action’, and how defining and acting on this might be helpful for a public speaker, especially in terms of nailing the Why.

The “action is what you go onstage to do, the physical process of trying to obtain a specific goal, often referred to as the objective.”

This is my edited version of their checklist to help you select your own action for your presentation or speech:

“An action must:

  • Be physically capable of being done;
  • Be fun (or compelling) to do;
  • Be specific;
  • Have its test in the other person (the Handbook writers mean the other actor onstage, but in our case, it’s the audience at whom and for whom the action needs to be directed);
  • Have a ‘cap’.”

This means that you need to pick a verb to act on, which will allow you to change something in your audience, probably how they feel about your topic or idea.

For example, you can choose to challenge your audience about their preconceptions or to reassure them that your solution will be effective and straightforward. Your cap is simple; either at the end of your speech your audience is reassured, or it isn’t. Either your audience has been challenged, or it has not been.

There are many more possibilities, as many as there are transitive verbs. Avoid being too general or too neutral, such as ‘to inform’ the audience, which gives you no clues about how to present either your message or yourself. It’s also not much fun.

Emotion is important. If you can change how your audience feels, you have a fighting chance of changing what they think and, ultimately, what they do.

We’d all like to think that we are rational creatures who change our minds when the facts indicate that we should. However, there is a lot of evidence that is exactly what we don’t do, even when presented with good arguments against our current position. So, bullet points on a PowerPoint slide alone may not cut it. This is the reason always knowing why you are speaking, and acting on that knowledge, is so important.

When you have chosen your ‘action’, the Why of your speech is actionable. You will be ready to select all the relevant facts, vocabulary, arguments, tones, pauses, facial expressions and body language that will help you fulfil your objective.

What’s more, if you commit to your action, you may find that your instinct takes over and you will graduate from needing to make conscious choices to being ‘in flow’. You will have become connected to your Why, and to your audience.


Storytelling: the best communication tool a leader can get

When Stephen Elop, the newly appointed CEO of Nokia wanted to rouse his employees into reacting to their loss of market leadership, he sent a memo to the whole company. He began it with a story.

At first glance, the story had nothing to do with mobile telecommunications. It told of a man standing on a burning oil platform faced with a stark choice: waiting to burn to extinction along with the flaming rig or to risk the plunge into the freezing water in hope of rescue. After securing his audience’s attention with this arresting image, Elop explains his metaphor:

“We poured gasoline on our own burning platform. I believe we have lacked accountability and leadership to align and direct the company through these disruptive times. We had a series of misses. We haven’t been delivering innovation fast enough. We’re not collaborating internally. Nokia, our platform, is burning.”
Just as the man on the platform had to behave differently and do the unthinkable, so did Nokia executives.

Only a few days after the circulation of the memo, Elop and Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, posted an open letter announcing plans for a broad strategic partnership that “combines the respective strengths of our companies and builds a new global mobile ecosystem.” Moreover, Nokia would adopt Windows Phone as its primary smartphone strategy.
So why not merely announce the partnership rather than waste time with unconnected anecdotes about oil platforms?

Elop needed to prepare his people emotionally for the changes ahead. Elop’s story instilled in them a sense of urgency which would align them all in a new business direction.

Let’s explore how storytelling helps a leader influence his or her organisation.
Traditionally, we look up to storytellers as bearers of wisdom, who embody a special authority which trumps hierarchical roles. In pre-historical societies, the storyteller was the group member who dispensed knowledge essential for the survival of the tribe, using a range of analogies and metaphors. This was a creative endeavour. Somewhere in our primitive brains, we haven’t forgotten that, and we still respond. This is why great leaders need to be great storytellers.

What stories don’t do is simply supply information in a neutral way. They present events, people and facts in a certain light. Our interpretations are covertly – and thus irresistibly – directed. Stories get under our skin. That’s what makes storytelling such an effective tool for influencing. Once Elop had seeded the image of the burning oil platform in the minds of his employees, it would have been very difficult for them to resist his interpretation of Nokia’s market position, and the conclusion that drastic action had to be taken.

Stories get our imaginative juices working. They make us curious about what else there is to find out – some stories satisfy that curiosity with a ending, others prompt us to ask more questions and get involved – so we supply the ending ourselves. In this instance, Elop provided the happy ending a few days later with the announcement of a rescue in the shape of a lifesaving partnership with Microsoft. By telling a story first, he guided his people towards seeing this change as positive solution to the crisis rather than a new threat.

 

Top ten tips for inspiring storytelling

  1. Think about where you are in the story. Are you an outsider to unfolding events, or the main character?
  2. Make sure you are taking your audience on a journey. Stories are full of events and revelations which take the audience somewhere new.
  3. Don’t rush. The pleasure is in the telling.
  4. Allow yourself to see the pictures, hear the sounds, smell the scents, savour the tastes. Then your audience will too.
  5. All the best stories contain transformations. Think about what transformation you want your audience to experience by the end of the story too.
  6. Stories don’t have to be original to be effective; they do have to be told with conviction and sincerity.
  7. Audiences love it when you re-integrate a detail you’ve casually mentioned earlier – especially when it holds the key to your story’s resolution.
  8. A pause, a look, a gesture all can convey as much, if not more, than words.
  9. To keep your audiences on their toes, use… suspense!
  10. The greater the range of emotions in your story, the deeper the connection you will build with your audience.

Storytelling and the Art of Creating Reality What Steve Jobs’s speech can tell us about leadership, personal brand and the art of creating reality.

When Steve Jobs made his Commencement speech to the graduating students of Standford University in 2005, he was already a business icon and in possession of a powerful personal brand which was widely admired. His expertise at marketing beautifully designed technology was matched only by his genius at marketing himself as an entrepreneur and leader. While the Mac brand is disseminated mainly through product imagery, its founder’s preferred means were personal appearances at launches and the stories he would tell to his audience.

So why make did he make stories such a major tool for promoting himself?

 

Personal Brand

We are all adept at telling stories about ourselves. Despite all the arbitrary events and apparent randomness of large sections of our lives, we can’t help shaping our experience into something meaningful.

The stories we tell about ourselves to great extent determine our own view of who we are – maverick outsider or girl-next-door, resourceful or cheated by fate, inspired visionary or determined grafter, or possessing a myriad of other qualities or traits. The more we recount the events of our lives in a particular way, the more we come to be convinced by this version of ourselves.

That said, the story may change over time. Our genre may shift depending on our current emotional state. In low mood, we might be relating a sob story. In a more jocular frame of mind, the same set of events might take on a comic turn.

Because we all tell stories, we have the perfect vehicle for presenting ourselves to others in such way in which we would like to be seen.

When storytelling to others, we may be adjusting tone, selecting where to focus or which details to leave in or out, depending on our relationship with our audience. Or depending on how we would like that relationship to be.

Stories are much more effective than listing a set of attributes – resourceful, hard-working, open-minded, etc… – which by themselves are not necessarily credible.

For instance, I always recommend that candidates for job interviews mine their previous experiences for a true story that demonstrates talents with which they can hold their interviewers’ attention.

For good measure, I suggest they dramatise any problem they’ve encountered and paint it very darkly indeed before explaining what they did to resolve it. They can be as self-deprecating in tone as they wish, as long the story ends with the problem fixed by their action. This action must epitomise their personal ingenuity, fast-thinking, empathy – whichever talent fits the bill. They never need to describe themselves as ingenious, etc… , but that will be the impact made.

Surprisingly, sometimes people find it difficult to think of a suitable story to tell. These people are often obviously skilled with a good grasp of how to relate to others. And yet I have to tease it out of them!

Perhaps the story they’ve internalised is that of a small problem which didn’t require any special skills to overcome. In other words, they’ve been telling themselves a story which minimises their abilities rather than one which gives them their due. That’s the reality they’ve created with their story. And that’s the reality that they will present to potential employers – unless they’re prepared to rethink their own life story.

 

The art of getting a story to create reality

A masterclass in using stories to give you more bang for your buck can be gleaned from the Commencement speech that Steve Jobs gave at Stanford University. For the full transcript, look here: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html , and for a recording look here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHWUCX6osgM

“Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. No big deal. Just three stories.”

This is the deliberately underplayed opening. The signposting is, however, neat. We get just enough to appreciate there will be a structure but there are no spoilers about what is to come. So, Jobs creates some anticipation.

Each story is signposted as to what themes will arise, yet each time he sets up expectations which he later overthrows.

The first story, he says, is about connecting dots. He goes on to begin the story “It started before I was born.” By the conclusion, the story which initially we have been directed to understand in terms of birth and destiny turns out instead to be about happy accidents.

One might assume that the second story, which is billed as “a story about love and loss”, would be a romantic tale about his marriage. It’s actually boy sets up computer company in garage, boy gets fired by his computer company, boy returns to computer company as hero and CEO. His wife barely gets a look in.

The subject of the third story is starkly introduced: death. In a rather moving section which shifts fluidly from the abstract to the personal, the expectation he set up earlier about a love story are finally fulfilled as Jobs expresses his regret that dying means leaving his family too soon. In a finely crafted sentence, the plot does a 180º turn. The doctors weep as they realise that, against all odds, Job’s cancer is operable and he is granted a reprieve. “I had the surgery,” he says. “And I’m fine now.”

No event turns out to be for no reason. Job’s narrative voice shifts backwards and forwards in time, allowing him to direct the audience’s attention to how seemingly irrelevant details become the keys to success. Just as Cinderella’s lost slipper reconnects her to her Prince, Jobs’ casual interest calligraphy launches a font revolution in personal computers.

All three stories are actually about redemption in their different ways, which was likely very close to Jobs’s own view on his life. They also served a useful specific purpose in the context in which this speech was delivered, to an audience of young men and women graduating from Standford that summer 2005, starting their own careers.

It is not too far fetched to claim that this speech has messianic ambitions. The protagonist suffers and is reborn, each time newly wedded to his work. Jobs exhorts his audience to echo his own relationship with work: “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” He urges them repeatedly, “Don’t settle.” These calls to action would have less force, however, even coming from Steve Jobs, without these authentic stories to demonstrate their essential truth.

It’s impossible to say how much others would supply corroborating or contradicting evidence for these self-fashioned myths. But the telling of these stories in that moment, and also in their afterlife on YouTube and in the transcribed text, will give these myths a definitive cast.

Steve Jobs is not the only technology giant who has benefitted himself and his corporation through the persuasive power of stories. Similarly, the Hollywood movie The Social Network has become the founding myth of the Facebook story, drowning out any other heterodoxies.

It’s also the reason that party political leaders bolster what Aristotle would have called their “ethos”, or appeal to character, with stories about growing up in an ordinary family. Conference speeches are full of anecdotes about humble immigrant origins or fathers getting on bikes to find work. On the surface, these life stories are not pertinent to policy, but they offer a chance to connect with a disparate audience over values.

Stories really are the art of creating reality.

 


Non-profit Sector Leaders and the Demands of Ambassadorship Part 2: Influencing on behalf of your beneficiaries

In this part of my Big Autumn Blog, I’m going to explore how leaders in the voluntary and non-profit sectors should use their personal presence to influence others on behalf on their organisations.

Walking the talk, telling the story

Our impressions are not only shaped by the decisions leaders make when they broadcast to the media, but our personal encounters at networking events, conferences, one-to-one meetings and a whole plethora of occasions formal and informal.

We have certain expectations of these encounters, and of what kind of status we expect leaders to project. While it’s true that some of these may be biases and prejudices that need to be ditched, there are some gold standards which should always be met, albeit through the unique persona of the individual leader.

Some leaders find ingenious ways to justify keeping their skills under-developed and their presence uninspiring. They like to describe this sort of communication as “authentic”.

Although this self-limiting behaviour crops up everywhere, not just in the non-profit sector, there is perhaps a particular vulnerability for this sort of thing in a world where integrity is so important and serving others is paramount. The commendable aim to eschew showing off can lead to abandonment of the responsibility to engage. There is nothing authentic about mumbling, rambling, using jargon or hunching up your shoulders and staring a long list of bullet points on a PowerPoint slide while your audience fidgets.

In fact, there is a disturbing incongruence when a leader mutters about standing up for beneficiaries while stooped over a podium. Whatever words are delivered, standing up for anything doesn’t come across as a credible description of what that leader is doing. Welcoming the spotlight and raising your status within the field (to mix metaphors) are surely requirements of the job.

What leaders in the non-profit sector do have in abundance is a passion for making lives better for their beneficiaries. Yet, quite often, they don’t harness this passion enough as ambassadors for their causes. Passion should be the engine of all their communication with their stakeholders. It shouldn’t be edited out as unprofessional. Passion is persuasive. To avoid deploying it is a strategic mistake.

I am not suggesting anything so coarse as to encourage CEOs to dominate every situation or to weep as they speak of the plight of the hard-done-by. That would be ineffective, and as dangerous as deciding to use every opportunity to plug your helpline no matter what the cost. A great communicator is flexible. It’s not only about having the ability to shift along a scale from dominance to submission and back again – using tone, posture, gesture, pause, proximity, eye contact – but also about having the judgement to decide which is best when. The same goes for how much emotion to use, and to what end. It’s worth bearing in mind that if you can change how people feel, only then do you have a chance of changing how they think, and then what action they subsequently take.

Another key element of using personal appearances effectively is being able to talk naturally but succinctly about what your organisation does. A huge resource that non-profit sector leaders can draw on (in stark contrast to their corporate sector counterparts) is a sense of higher purpose. Nevertheless, when called upon to say a few words about Charity X, a surprising number of CEOs produce a shopping list full of jargon-laden activities. None of that is going to inspire or stick in the minds of listeners. What would stick is a vivid evocation of the purpose. It usually is there, somewhere, buried, and this has never needed to come to the fore more than in this economic climate.

I can always tell when a CEO is managing an organisation which is undergoing big changes from the way she or he speaks about what it does. Invariably, the sentences are long, convoluted and full of qualifying clauses. The delivery is often rapid, as if a pause for breath would reveal the panic at the core of the whole project. A CEO leading an organisation is able to express a vision for the future rather than merely reflect current turmoil. This communication obviously needs more than a glib turn of phrase, but the total absence of any coherent message is not going to help matters. A simple statement which hasn’t had the emotion bled out of it can offer stakeholders a starting point from which to move forward.

I’d suggest this checklist before turning up to a networking event or making a speech at a conference:

  • Can I tell people about what we do in three short simple sentences?
  • Have I decided how I want my audience to feel about what I’m saying?
  • Am I choosing to send out the right signals about my power in this given moment?
  • Am I ready to pause enough for people to absorb the key points I’m making?

Non-Profit Sector Leaders and the Demands of Ambassadorship Part 1: Bad communication makes for bad reputation

There’s a fuzzy line between leaders and the organisations they lead.

They are not the same thing yet we assume the leader is not only a figurehead but an incarnation of the larger entity – a whole complex mass of projects and departments and practices made flesh. More prosaically, how a leader communicates determines how the wider organisation is perceived internally and externally. And our inferences are often correct: lacklustre communication is a pretty good indicator of lacklustre leadership which in turn indicates poor effectiveness throughout the organisation.

This is true on both the macro and the micro level. The macro level – the continuing narrative of how a leader communicates either overtly through press releases, or more subtly through choices about the workplace environment – is down to planning and implementing a coherent communication strategy. The micro level, what the leader says and how, in any given moment – at a particular networking event for instance – also counts. The impact is registered by both those who are present and those who hear about the event afterwards.

Ultimately, it’s about telling a story that rings true, that is consistent yet compelling.

For leaders of charities and voluntary organisations, this is critical particularly now. They are in the spotlight as never before. The state is withdrawing from the areas where it traditionally made provision. There are widespread expectations that the voluntary sector will step in and provide solutions. At the same time, dwindling resources suggest that a great many organisations will have to merge or fold. For those still standing, there will be an increased urgency to put forward persuasive arguments on behalf of their beneficiaries.

In some circumstances, a leader can change how the whole sector is perceived through what he or she says. There are as many opportunities as pitfalls.

This ambassadorial responsibility is not always taken as seriously or with the degree of imagination that it should be. And there are grave consequences for those organisations with leaders who fail to commit to this endeavour or who make big mistakes for short-term gains.

Take heed of the cautionary tale of Christine Pratt, CEO of the erstwhile National Bullying Helpline (NBH). Back in 2010, the UK was freshly battered by economic crisis and there was a distinct sense that public was dissatisfied with its political leaders. The then Prime Minister Gordon Brown was being criticised for his communication style, which allegedly included hurling paperweights across the room when enraged by his interlocutors.

When Mrs Pratt learned that the NBH had received calls from individual staff members at Downing Street complaining of workplace bullying, she leapt into action. She called the press.

It’s easy to see how Mrs Pratt would have perhaps congratulated herself on spotting an opportunity to promote her organisation and its work on bullying. However, this tactical exploitation of a topical issue was ultimately a strategic disaster.

If you tell your callers that “your call is confidential to us and you will be treated with dignity and respect at all times”, and then announce the news of their calls to the media, you are clearly not communicating in accordance with your professed values. And what kind of ambassador sacrifices integrity for visibility?

Patrons, including Conservative MP Ann Widdecombe, dropped the NBH like a hot brick. The NBH was swiftly placed under scrutiny by the Charity Commission, and criticism spread beyond the ethics of confidentiality.

Even after the NBH folded, intrigue followed Mrs Pratt in the shape of complaints over conflicts of interest and over the poor handling of an investigation into an employment dispute in March 2010. According to the Telegraph, when a hearing in Newcastle was told that Mrs Pratt had a national reputation for her work, the panel chairman remarked dryly: “She certainly does now.”

This debacle threatened to damage not only the reputation of one woman and her helpline, but the reputation of helplines in general.

In the Summer 2010 edition of ACEVO network magazine, Rekha Wadhwani, CEO of The Helplines Association (THA) – a 500 member umbrella association –  wrote frankly about how she had used the NBH PR disaster as a trigger for her own campaign, sensing an opportunity for restoring faith in helplines and for arguing for a change in policy.

Ms Wadhwani’s strategy was to reach out with separate messages to three different stakeholders – different objectives for different audiences: a press release to national and industry media assuring the public that THA members are required to have standards of confidentiality in order to hold membership; a written promise to members and key partners to uphold their reputation; and a reaching out to regulatory bodies to begin a dialogue on improving confidentiality policies.

Resulting press coverage created the impetus for Ms Wadhwani to campaign for tighter regulation. Her leadership –  her decision to communicate effectively at a key moment –  may have saved the good name of UK helplines. It certainly would have done her own profile no harm at all.

A communication strategy is not something you can merely delegate to the PR department, if you have one. You should consider how your personal interventions can shift perceptions seismically. You don’t need to do a lot; you just need to get it right when you do. Sticking your neck out above the parapet is vital if you want to influence policy and public opinion.

However, these might be good questions to ask yourself first:

  • Am I, the leader of X, the best person to make this point?
  • Have I checked my message to make sure that it’s congruent with our values, vision and mission?
  • What is the climate like? Turbulent? Optimistic?
  • Is the timing right for an intervention?
  • Have I thought about how I will respond to the dialogue I’ve initiated with the whole range of stakeholders?
  • Do I have a plan of how I want to shape the dialogue, with ideas about how I will follow up my intervention?
  • Do I have an eventual outcome in mind, which is achievable?